Askis

It's not about witch hunting, it's about WG needing to make a decision about this mod now. Before open beta and definitely before the official full release. If you keep allowing this mod, it's going to become a must-have for everyone, as not using it is sub-optimal if your opponent does use it. Might as well add it as an official part of the game then, at least to make it look better. And for what little it's going to matter, if any aim prediction makes it into the full release, whether through an official option or an allowed mod, I will stop playing WoWS. Sorry, but playing "aim at the red point" isn't any fun for me.

I wasn't even aware of the aim prediction mod prior to this thread, but since it's officially allowed for now, I sought it out and tested it a bit. My two cents on it: Do I need it? No, I've managed to get reasonably good at leading my shots on my own. Does it help anyway? Absolutely, "reasonably good" is not "absolutely perfect", I don't have to watch my first salvo anymore to know if I was on target or messed up my lead slightly, I know I'm on target and following the path of an (ugly) line and point even makes it easier to predict where to aim for maneuvering enemies. And now that I have used it, I can think back on quite a few times where I assumed my opponent was highly skilled, but it might just have been the mod... It isn't perfect mind you, the lead it gives for Destroyers is off a bit, especially at close range, so relying on it completely means most shots will miss, but once you notice that you still need to adjust a little, all salvos will be on target. Against Cruisers and Battleships it's pretty much spot on and makes using your guns at maximum range hilariously easy. Yes, it only shows you where to aim at this very moment, if your target maneuvers before your shots arrive, you'll still miss, but if he doesn't or can't (due to terrain, torpedoes or other ships for example), the only factor for misses will be the RNG. And if you've already learned to anticipate a target's movement, only the most erratic turns at long range are going to help in any way. But probably the most broken part about it, you can perfectly aim at enemies that are currently spotted behind solid cover, but won't be in cover anymore by the time your shells arrive. Those DDs who think they can pop smoke just before going out into the open? There's already a full salvo on the way, which will hit even if they disappear before someone gets a direct line of sight to him. This mod takes a whole lot of guesstimation, learning and skill out of the game and needs to be treated as a cheat. If you're going to make it illegal, use the CB phase to find a way not just to identify people using it, but to prevent it's use entirely. If there's even a small chance of someone using it, despite it being a bannable offense, anyone who knows that it exists will get paranoid every time a BB hits them at maximum range. If you're not going to make it illegal, add an official aim prediction in the game , which defaults to on for everybody, so new players won't have to find out the hard way that they are at an inherent disadvantage to anyone who looks around for mods.

I've had situations where a DD at <1km fired torps out of his smoke and wasn't spotted, then I tried the same and got wrecked by accurate fire...

It seems you get one mission a day up to a max of three missions total, like Hearthstone does it. The description is probably outdated.

From my experience, the indicator only disappears when you're moving straight ahead, if you hold down A/D or lock a rudder setting with Q/E it should stay on the screen. Glance at the minimap every now and then (increasing it's size with + can be quite useful) , look at the white line, that's where your ship is pointed, if land is somewhere in the way, maneuver to avoid it.

This lagging doesn't seem to be caused only by looking through smokescreens. I've noticed spotted targets at very long ranges (15-20km) lagging/warping sometimes, it tends to ease off after aiming at them for a little while, but sometimes happens again when exiting the scope view to look around, then switching back to aim. Currently I'm assuming that position, direction and speed of enemy ships at ranges above 15km is updated only very occasionally, with update ticks increasing significantly when you're aiming directly at them, resulting in warping when the outdated position of the ship is corrected. A similar thing seems to happen with enemies that are inside smoke clouds. I've seen quite a few DDs go invisible inside their smoke, then fire, loosing the cloaking device for a few seconds. Once they pop up, they look stationary for about half a second, then jump and move normally until they go invisible again. This happens even at very close ranges (<2km) While reducing the update ticks for unspotted or far away targets is probably a good way to cut down on server to client traffic, especially those close range instances have thrown my aim off quite often.